Affirm America

At a community meeting in 2012, when asked why she was planning to build a performance art center in rural upstate New York, Marina Abramovic replied that the architect “Rem Koolhaas has said to me ‘Real art is not happening in cities. It is happening outside cities.’” Koolhaas, for his part, mounted an exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2020 called “Countryside, The Future,” in which he explored “the 98% of the Earth’s surface not occupied by cities,” and its profound possibilities, both creative and economic.